they don't resort to violence first they always resort to cleverness you know here in the United States the American government has depicted these individuals as if they're Predators as if they're Tigers they're not Tigers they're house cats but they're very clever house cats and so twice in their history they were able to manipulate the American government into wiping out their enemies see when they were stuck in that pincer movement in the late 1990s early 2000s zambada that's where reached into his cleverness bag he contacted the attorney in San Diego the attorney in San Diego started
feeding information to the Department of Justice so you know they believe they operate under the principle identified by the military strategist sunu 2500 years ago that the enemy of my enemy is my friend they don't have to be stronger than Tijana they just need an ally who's stronger well they have an uncle Uncle Sam the opinions of the guests and hosts are their own and do not represent the opinions of Ironclad the Border Patrol or the Department of Homeland [Music] Security welcome to Borderland Narcosis in Ironclad original our next guest is Pierre Rini who is
an author in a former Los Angeles Kingpin he was charged with operating a criminal Enterprise under the federal drug kingpin statute and prosecuted for participating in wide- ranging drug conspiracies receiving extensive history of drug trafficking in Southern California throughout the 1990s involved direct collaboration with highlevel calor operatives who managed the cartel's american-based distribution Network and its money laundering operations this experience provided him with an intimate understanding of the cartel's Logistics and operational strategies yeah I don't look like you're what most people think a large drug trafficker looks like no don't worry we've had a few
other individuals and uh I don't think I I I'm not I'm not one to judge what anyone looks like in a particular field most people judge me and didn't realize I was a federal agent in a special operation unit sure of course so yeah yeah no well Pier before we get started what I want to do is kind of read your the first paragraph of your email so the audience kind of will kind of hear what we received because I I think that was one of the most fascinating emails we've ever received and uh to
hear it was just it it made me have a lot of questions so I'm going to start it says I write to you to express interest in appearing on your platform to bring for to bring a former trafficker perspective to the discussion about utilizing military assets to attack the Mexican drug cartels unfortunately the discussions I have heard on your platform and many others is uninformed because none of our guests or none of your guests understand how the cartels are structured and why in the case of caloa this particular Alliance of drug traffickers has exhibited such
remarkable organizational resilience such that they've withstood 35 years of continuous assaults by our most powerful law enforcement and intelligence gathering agencies FBI DEA CIA and NSA our government has spent three decades and tens of billions of dollars attempting to [ __ ] this collection of organizations led by functionally literate uh men with third fourth fifth grade Ed educations and yet all of our government's efforts to date have failed by every conceivable metric damn so when that was read to me I was blown away by just just that comment alone and and makes me very excited
to have this conversation thank you Pierre if you wouldn't mind give me a little bit of a a short bio of your life just so I can so the audience will know and then we'll get digging into the questions because I'd love to hear I mean there's layers to this email that I want to get into but please just so the audience knows who was talking well my name is Pier rosini I'm from Los Angeles I was involved at a got involved in a younger age in the drug trafficking space and uh made my way
up to a fairly significant level I was ultimately charged in multiple Federal prosecutions under the federal drug kingpin statute I received a 30-year sentence of which I spent just 26 years in prison got released last year and as a non Mexican Latino with fairly significant connections I was always welcome within the Mexican prisoner community and so over the course of the past two decades you know I've lived with the men I've eaten with the men and so I've really gotten to know them on a personal level and how they think how they approach their problem
solving how they structure their operations they have a deep understanding into them personally and culturally and I think that those elements are missing from a lot of the discussions and quite frankly you see here in the United States there's just a fundamental misapprehension as to how the cartel organizations are structured and what the very purpose of the cartel is and uh quite frankly you know their operations are very modest in the United States contrary to how it's depicted quite frankly there aren't too many operatives in the US see if we've gotten to the point now
where being a member of a cartel means you're Mexican well the overwhelming majority of Mexican traffickers in the United States are not associated with any cartel organization here in the US we have a very serious problem from the drug trafficking perspective in that you have a large number of foreign Nationals operating in the US within that foreign National drug trafficking set there's a subset which are the Mexican Nationals they are the largest but within that subset the number of actual cartel guys is shockingly small the I was at a federal prison in California that had
2,000 men and that prison is known as having the most cartel guys in any prison on the federal system and out of 2,000 men we had 1100 to 1200 Mexican or Mexican ameran traffickers and out of those 12200 guys maybe 25 to 35 guys were cartel what's the it's shockingly small so what prison was that if you don't mind me asking I was at the I started off at the maximum security levels and I made my way down to the California prison was at the medium at lak okay and then when you say what is
it that diff the differential uh the what's the difference or that differentiates the two just a reg Smuggler to a cartel member well well first of all the cartel isn't a monolith they don't identify themselves that way so you may have guys that work for zad's organization they don't identify themselves as CA cartel they're just working for zambada and so you have a collection of Agents collection of or organizations came together to form this structure Each of which take different areas of responsibility like I sent your producer a schematic for the Cala cartel that network
is 44 organizations large of those 44 organizations the overwhelming majority of them are in Mexico they have nobody in the United States at all you got maritime operations on the coast in NAD Aviation operations in aapo those guys have or you know those have nothing to do with the us only a handful of the organizations actually have people in the United States so when you think for instance caoa you know and I'm from Los Angeles and Los Angeles has been the home base for C now for 35 years it's their principal base of operations in
the United States same thing with halisco because halisco used to be a part of caloa so they broke away they essentially mirror each other's operations like I'm not really competent to talk about the Gulf side because I really had no interactions with those individuals but with respect to caloa and halisco their operations in United States are primarily logistical the majority of the transactions are negotiated in Mexico or in Los Angeles see what people don't understand is that the market in the United States is dynamic the price in Chicago for a kilo may be 3,000 a
key well in Los Angeles it's 18 so if you're going to buy 100 kilos are you going to pay 2.3 million or 1.8 million of course you come to La the overwhelming majority of large trafficking transactions I'm talking seven figures and up happen in Los Angeles you take delivery in one of the three regional distribution hubs east of the Mississippi so for caloa they operate out of Chicago New York Atlanta and then there's a logistical Hub in North Carolina right outside of brag those are the only four Places You'll Find cartel operatives east of the
Mississippi there are zero cartel members of caoa in Ohio Pennsylvania Florida Virginia none of those people that are Mexicans operating in that area are cartel members they're the customers of the cartel see if you're a Mexican national you're in a privileged position because you can deal directly with the cartel distributor so if you're a guy in Cincinnati you either deal with the distributor out of Chicago and pay the Chicago price or if you have a better connection you come to Los Angeles and pay the Los Angeles price if you have an even better connection you
go to Tijuana you pay the Tijana price as you get closer to Mexico the price is dropping La is only two hours from the border so now you know guys from New York come to La guys from Seattle come to La now they may take delivery from their Regional Hub like they don't deliver the last mile so if you're out of Cleveland you got to take possession of the product in Chicago now you can either transport it from Chicago to Cleveland or Chicago to Detroit yourself or you pay one of the local groups Dominicans Puerto
Ricans non-associated Mexicans none of those people are cartel none of the wholesale level people wholesale level customers are cartel literally e of Mississippi you might have for the entire SCA L cartel cocaine operation 25 guys which is a fundamentally different picture than how it's depicted now west of the Mississippi they have the primary Hub which is Los Angeles which is maybe 30 guys I'm talking there's less than 65 guys handling the entire cocaine operation in the United States or all a you'll have a Distribution Hub in Denver and then you have a secondary importation Hub
as an emergency in Phoenix they always have redundancies and that's basically it there's five places in the US where they operate is this I'm like blown away and I don't mean to laugh I'm just kind of shocked this is public knowledge it's very well known throughout the lawn enforcement Community but you have to understand law enforcement works on the premise of bringing cases and in courts and I've been I spent 20 years of my life in courts and uh in courts they are allowed to use presumptions and so there's an element of conspiracy law that
allows for the government to characterize us as co-conspirators and so for instance if you were from Chicago and you're coming to LA to buy product from me you're not my customer the government characterizes you as my Chicago distributor that's not a that's a fundamentally flawed way of looking at it now you can do that in court but in the real world it skews the discussion see part of the problem we have in our country is that we're not defining the adversary correctly and if you don't Define the adversary correctly whatever Solutions you propose are not
only going to resolve the issue you're trying to address you're actually going to exacerbate the very problem which is essentially what's happened for the last 40 Years of our drug war let's go back to your Beginnings what got you started in the drug smuggling world I wasn't involved in smuggling well first of all you have to understand as an American you are not going to ever deal with a cartel distributor you have to either be Mexican national or a Mexican-American with a direct blood tie for which somebody in Mexico can vouch for you know when
you're a Mexican national operating in the United States they get 20 tons every 3 weeks to La that's 20,000 kilos they got to turn 20,000 kilos in 3 weeks well what's your Threat Vector Americans there are no foreign National FBI agents or DEA agents so if you exclude all contact with Americans the probability of getting infiltrated plummets the damn near zero now that's on the distribution side there is an aspect of it where they do utilize Americans and that's if you have a special skill so for instance if you're a pilot if you have a
trucking company and you know have a fleet of a half a dozen trucks they want to talk talk to you if you're a chemist a banker engineer they're not using you for the purposes of selling their product they won't give you an account to go get 200 kilos on credit but they will use your services as a transporter with your airplane well for me my initial forway wasn't actually in the drug trafficking context at all I uh you know I was heavily recruited in service you know I scored in the top 2% of the State
of California top 5% in the nation full scholarships and back in my era in the 80s there wasn't too many people involved with programming and so when I was recruited I got scholarship through the service and uh I went through the program you know I was a computer geek growing up so I I completed a school I ended up suffering an injury so I ended up spent I got in an accident so I spent basically six months on crutches and so while I was stuck at home I started fiddling around with cell phones and so
as a 19-year-old I was able to learn how to reprogram cell phones so that you didn't have to pay for the calls now it's just 19-year-old silliness well a few years later and I started doing then I got involved with selling Ecstasy with some high school friends so I would just reprogram our phone so that we wouldn't have to pay for the service a few years later when the Motorola flip phone came out it was really popular with drug traffickers and I was able to get my hand on the programs to reprogram those phones now
this is what took it to a different level because I was able to I Chang numbers faster than the FBI can get the wire Taps so I was able to thwart the f 's ability to wiretap Communications as you can imagine this would be a service that would be very popular within the trafficking community so by that point I was already a very substantial ecstasy trafficker and then I started providing the service for other drug traffickers and the way I would I would obtain the information I'd get we build some scanning equipment I'd go grab
a room at the mandre on on Sunset Boulevard so every car going into Beverly Hills if they had their cell phone on I would pirate their data so the the manner in which I would obtain the information was 100% purely random so not only could I thw the FBI's ability to wiretap but I could also thwart the FBI's ability to use roving wir Taps so by the time I was 24 years old you've got two different Cena cells plus the Italians in Los Angeles plus the mob guys in Vegas plus the Chinese plus the Russian
I'm doing everybody's phones and so I was able to become acquainted with a lot this is what the government considers telecommunications fraud and so that was my segue into meetings as individuals like for them I wasn't the drug trafficker I was the Brazilian who was a hacker I had a specialized skill and so I was able to Parlay that relationship later on to say hey can I get some of your guys' product I had a friend in Beverly Hills who wanted to get some product you're like hey tell your Gringo friend sorry we can't even
talk to him like we'll have Johnny talk to you and you talk to him so I had to deal with a cutout and so that's basically the background it's you know it was uh they viewed me as someone that was an asset simply because I was able to provide a service no different than a truck driver with a big rig or a pilot with an aircraft and from there it parlayed into what later on became a significant trafficking relationship now the reason why they were interested in is because the Ecstasy operation I was a part
of we had a retired chemistry professor from the University of Southern California developed the formulat produce pharmaceutical grade compounds out of non-regulated chemicals so we had what was probably the most sophisticated lab in the US producing ecstasy and uh that led into an ecstasy trafficking relationship with some of the cartel guys CU they'd want to party and do Ecstasy well we had the highest quality material in Los Angeles and so it built started with the telecommunication fraud parlayed into the Ecstasy parlayed into the cocaine and then they said hey can you produce our ice they
wanted the highly purified form of crystal methamphetamine they're like why don't you grab your chemist your Gringo friends and come to Mexico like no we're not coming to Mexico I'm not gonna do that but if you want you can send us the produ and we'll just whip it up for you and so we started we ended up having like a network of maybe a half a dozen Labs two of them were in Beverly Hills one in Benedict Canyon one in Coldwater Canyon on the backside past molland facing Sherman Oaks we had another one where uh
huh you famili with yeah yeah two of them in Hollywood Hills and then we had uh one on Sunset Plaza overlooking the LA Basin and then the last one was in Marina del R and so those that's basically how it that was the development so from their perspective I was the haacker who had a chemist which is different than most Dynamics yeah but they you were trusted enough that they were willing to work with you on the chemistry side yes like if I were to go to them and say hey let me get 200 kilos
of coke they say sorry go deal with Johnny got it because they weren't authorized to deal with Americans yeah you like you couldn't set up an account because you understand the Mexican national is privileged because one day know you can't be a federal law enforcement officer two they're able to vet you because they can speak with other individuals within the higher level trafficking Community to gather your reputation and three before they set up an account for you they're going to know where your family lives back home so if your parents live in guado okay where's
their address check siblings check where's your wife live her family oh corov vaka beautiful check parents siblings so when they set up an account for you in Los Angeles your family back in Mexico are to guarantee yeah that's collateral that's the security that's why there's very few actual cartel cases like I see these you know we sit in prison you know we just laugh you see the Attorney General announcing 240 members of the zata organization arrested in Los Angeles or arrested in the United States there's not 240 people in the entire organization in Mexico much
less in the United States they got 10 guys in La that was the biggest sell in the entire country was 10 men that was Zas they received the shipments every three to four weeks 10 15 20 tons so you get 20 years you get 30 years excuse me I got 34 total 34 total you spend time in prison you know you're you're surrounded by Mexican Nationals you're surrounded by all the conversations you learn a lot more does this does does your time in prison bring you closer to understanding the organization sure certainly certainly and it
you really have to appreciate the history because Cena Loa more so than the others because when you know when Cena laa began they were the smallest of the organiz of the structures you know a decade into their existence the First full year of CA cartel's operation was 1990 by 1999 they were on their last legs I mean they were they lost their Ally with am Maro cilo who passed away um Tiana was three times the size of caloa the Gul was two two and a half times the size and the Gul had their military Wing
the Zetas and so caloa was trapped in a pins movement they're coming north from the North in Tiana they're coming from the East with the gulf Zetas are just rolling up Plaza and so caloa has always relied on Craft and wit to outsmart their more powerful adversaries they were the unique they were unique in that caloa is a thousand miles from the border they're not a border state everybody else was just picking up money off the ground well they had to go A Thousand Miles they had to fight through rival territory to get to the
border crossings they they weren't even strong enough to take a border City on the American side they had to settle for Los Angeles Los Angeles is disadvantageous from a smuggling perspective now from a Distribution Hub it was remarkably wonderful but at the time they didn't choose LA because that was their choice they had no choice because Tijuana took San Diego and so for you to once you understand that history you'll see how they approach their problems they don't resort to violence first they always resort to cleverness you know here in the United States the American
government has depicted these individuals as if they're Predators as if they're Tigers they're not Tigers they're house cats but they're very clever house cats and so twice in their history they were able to manipulate the American government into wiping out their enemies see when they were stuck in that pincer movement in the late 1990s early 2000s zambada that's where he reached into his cleverness bag he contacted the attorney in San Diego the attorney in San Diego started feeding information to the Department of Justice so you know they they operate under the principle identified by the
military strategist sunu 2500 years ago that the enemy of my enemy is my friend they don't have to be stronger than Tijana they just need an ally who's stronger well they have an uncle Uncle Sam they the information to the American government the American government took out Tiana's leadership and decapitation strikes see George W bush thought it was a great Victory under War on Drugs they didn't realize you were been manipulated the whole time in 02 they crippled Tiwana in 03 they took out oio cardinas crippled the gulf cartel in 04 crippled uh what's his
name c franchise out in wat well they went from being under last legs in 95 99 to 2005 they're the most powerful cartel in the Western Hemisphere yeah the American government wiped out their enemies and so when you look at these individuals they're not they're you know they're not how can I say this they're not the Predators when they organized this cartel it was a security PCT now people think that they put together these groups in order for the purposes of maximizing profits that's what the drug organization does the collection of drug organizations came together
for security think of it like NATO well that's what their primary focus is as a cartel m i mean they have to ensure the safety of the constituent organizations it's a lot of information I I'm going to get to something but before that you know you talked about some but some some of the other things that happened recently with the S cartel was ELO the capturing of Elo sure um one person I interviewed believes that alayo uh was connected to at that time some kind of CIA connection is there any any word of that have
you heard any of that that there's a tie into to that well after 911 it was common knowledge throughout the higher level trafficking community that Cena had been approached and word on the Mexican side was no Arabs are to go into the US like they shut down the Border notify them about any Arabs trying to get into the country so some agency contacted them now who did it no one knows I'm not going to speculate but there was an effort on their part to make sure that no Arabs were coming across the border now it's
not so much a contact with the CIA what's documented is the contact with the Department of Justice because for like I said for seven years they fed information to doj and to the DEA for the purposes of taking out their enemies right now there was a second incident where the attorney in San Diego after doing this for seven years he wanted to step down he's an older guy he wants to retire so they needed to put a new substitute that's going to be the conduit for information well zambada put his son in that position so
Vincente zambada The Heir Apparent one of the biggest drug lords in all of Mexico he's meeting with doj officials he's meeting with DEA officials and the American government officials are operating in Mexico without declaring their presence and so this whole thing blew up because there was a meeting in DF in Mexico City where zambada left the meeting with the Americans gave them the Intel that they were there for and as he's walking out of the hotel some cop notices him like this is one of the most Wanted men in Mexico so he calls her backup
and they arrest zamb Jr vente and so when they arrest him like what are you guys doing I'm here helping you like what do you mean you're helping us you're under arrest he's like no I'm here meeting with the Gringos like Gringos what Gringos they're up in room 404 the Mexican police stumbled upon a whole group of guys from Washington DC in California that were operating clandestinely in Mexico see this was an enormous story in Mexico didn't get so much coverage here in the United States but there is not a Mexican national in Mexico who
is not convinced the American government created C really it'd be the equivalent of John Gotti's son meeting with Donald Trump Jr I mean it like be that kind of a level of then they caught the federal agents like what what what are you guys doing here operating illegally on Mexican soil and you're meeting with the drug lord v z was charged for hundreds of tons already the guy's coming and going they never arrested him there was a collaboration there was a working relationship between federal law enforcement and the zambada faction of the ca cartel so
when zambada actually got when the the sun actually got in sent to the United States his attorneys were able to use that dynamic as leverage he ended up getting only 14 years well and when the government and when the attorneys tried presenting this in court the attorne United States government actually declared National Security and precluded the attorney from San Diego from testifying that was part of the reason why they had to settle the case so whatever was happening an enormous effort was made to seal it by theer and you never no one never figured out
what federal agency that was it was DEA agents out of California and doj officials out of Washington DC interesting yes sir thank you for that yeah uh so another part of your email you mentioned I'm in a position to discuss some of the challenges that our military forces would likely encounter in Mexico uh equally important we can also discuss the second third and fourth order of consequences that might that we would face here in the United States I would love to take the conversation to this so first of all obviously the president uh deemed the
cartel as a terrorist organization and what are some of your thoughts on that alone um I think that it was a wise move because Trump is clearly setting up a negotiation and he's manufacturing bargaining chps he's going to use with the Mexican Government that way he can agree to suspend the terrorist design ation in exchange for the Mexican Government doing what he wants essentially he's going to be getting something for nothing you know Trump is a very astute negotiator with respect to the terrorist designation it's not going to impact cartel operations in Mexico one bit
really of course why is that the men are already all looking at life sentences whether it's life sentence for foreign Kingpin act violations or terrorist organization operations Life Is Life they're not going to you know there's a phrase in called another strike for the tiger well you can only get so many likes yeah so interesting so in their head it's they were damned if you do damned if you don't they're going to get in trouble either way whether it be for terrorist organization yeah from the from the now on the American side it's very interesting
because seeing how they only operate out of three distribution hubs and a logistical Hub east of the Mississippi you need trucks tractor trailers well now those drivers providing material support that's a 20-year mandatory minimum so you're going to be able to squeeze the low-level operators the the people manning the stash houses the people that are running the local distribution hubs the people that are running the local little courier services so it's going to create a tremendous amount of Leverage for the American prosecutors to squeeze the American side of the operations it's also going to put
at Jeopardy a lot of the money laundering operations because banks are not going to get don't want to get hit with moving you know terrorists money and so you know the had this been done 20 years ago it really would have impacted their money laundering operations today it's mostly through China so again it's not going to really impact that aspect but the individuals that are physically collecting the bul cash they're now participating in Terrorist related activities so they're going from 30 months and S 30 month sentences to 20 year sentences and so you can see
how it's going to create a tremendous disruption on the American side of the operations if our government plays it wisely did you see the other day a video came out from one of the cartels mentioning that they have no intentions of creating any harm in America they have a zero tolerance policy for any violent acts in the United States they do not Target police they do not Target law enforcement they do not Target judges prosecutors Witnesses even Cooperators the only thing you can do in the United States to engender an act of violence is steed
everything at that level is at the consignment level so if you you have a 200 kilo account they expect you to come back with their $3 million if you rip them off they'll come see you short of that there are no sanctioned acts of violence in the United States on behalf of any cartel organization now if you set some if you set a man up his brother might come see you you know his cousin might come see you that's a personal beef that's not cartel organization sanctioned so a lot of times you'll see where you'll
have personal issue but because the guy operating on his own they conflate and attribute it to the cartel organization whereas in reality they have zero tolerance for violence against federal law enforcement in the United States or in Mexico American police officers Untouchable in Mexico American civilians Untouchable really yes sir five years ago there was a group you know the American government accused CA because there was a family in Sonata that was UN alived and know you know terrible situation well caloa controls that border but you have other groups that are competitors well it was the
competitors group that unived that family so talking about the family that was uh the LDS Community yes sir we had one of the the family members on this show yeah that was that wasn't CAA that was the group out of wates that's challenging Cena for control of that Plaza so Cena went Not only was it not Cena but CA went and un alive that entire group and yet the American government still blam C they're like what are you talking about like it wasn't them and they they handled it for us yeah what is the what
is the reason for that I guess for that choice for them not to which which it's great to hear by way of I am I spend a lot of time on the borders but what what was it initially that created that like hey there's no never a green light on America there are there there there are only a handful of rules and the stringes is no attacks upon American law enforcement and that's from back in the 1980s the predecessor group was a Structure called the guadara cartel and the leadership within that group unived a federal
agent named kamaren and it provoked such an enormous response from the American government that It ultimately fractured the guadalahara cartel giving rise to the modern cartel structure the reason you know 40 years ago caloa sonot wz TJ they were off local franchises the larger guada group so when they decapitated the leadership of guad laada all those little franchises became Standalone cartels and so the men that were in charge back then you know Chapa Guzman was in his 30s were all the men that experienced the onslaught of pressure from the American government because now we were
sending bounty hunters into Mexico snatching guys up there's 100 men there's 100 men in prison in the United States associated with the commed homicide most of them had absolutely didn't even know what happened you got guys getting arrested in waters for a homicide that happened in guada it was just indiscriminate picking people up and so the reaction was so strong that the proverbial do not do anything to awaken the slumbering giant stay away from Americans at all cost you mentioned in the email and I want I would love to Circle back to it says what
are some of the biggest challenges the United States military would face if deployed against cartels in Mexico well in well the there are fundamental difference between the cartels and I'm like I can speak only about the Pacific side I don't speak about the Gulf side but on the Pacific side halisco new generation is much more militaristic you know caoa Prides itself on being clever so they're going to adopt a posture where they'll just take a lower profile the group out of halisco is the more militaristic group and they it's known throughout the higher level trafficking
community that their leader ship for their paramilitary wing are four former US Special Forces you've got a green yes a green ber that's Delta Force two Navy Seals and a ranger from the 75th Ranger regiment those are the leaders hold on I'm from the 75th Ranger regiment yes sir oh my goodness I've never heard this before so the top four for the cjg yes yeah because well the guy that in see when they when the halisco was part of caloa they were operating under the ages of a drug lord named nacho coronell well nacho konell
controlled halisco cell's partner was Lobo Valencia one of the valencias is mared demential so benel had the family connection so he's ostensibly in charge of the group at the time was called the mat zettas The Zeta Killers well he handled the money because he was a family member they had the American Special Forces handle the actual building of their param milary so they recruited former Mexican Special Forces which is the next tier of leadership their main body is former Mexican military personnel and then they bolster it with special forces from uh Central American countries Honduras
El Salvador Panama these are all guys that come to the United States they get trained they get trained by our guys at Brag they get trained at the school of Americans in Georgia you know counterinsurgency type training and so when they go back to their countries and they finish their tour service they they get paid top dollar remember alisco New Generation generates 34 billion a year they can afford to pay these men top dollar and so when they broke away and formed her own structure the matazetas became halisco New Generation it's essentially a military Wing
that got involved with drug trafficking whereas CA was always drug traffickers that built a military wing and so that's why you see where halisco particularly have had numerous encounters against the Mexican military and and one of the main concerns that I have is look the American Military is the most powerful fighting force in the history of the world we have career bureaucrats however who formulate plans that quite frankly aren't reasonable given the nature of the adversary you're fighting know we spent $2 trillion and 20 years fighting in Afghanistan we didn't lose a battle in Afghanistan
but yet today the flag of the illiterate go is flying over every flag pole in that country but there's a reason why we lost and it's not the military's fault it's the career bureaucrat the guys that go to the Harvard Kennedy School of government they're not qualified to come up with plans when the adversary is a functionally illiterate Mexican with a second third or fourth grade education any more than they were qualified to do so with an illiterate go herder in Afghanistan so now the guys that are putting together these plans they're already talking about
collaborating with our partners in the Mexican Government are you insane you you did an episode earlier about a gentleman named herado Garcia Luna hernado Luna was their minister of Public Safety their FBI director do you realize that five of the men in gon's cabinet split $270 million we're not talking about crooked cops in Tijuana or in mamoto there's plenty of them we're not talking about crooked Military Officers at the airbase in son where they're Landing the 737s we're talking about cabinet level officers the American government entrusted Luna with $4.5 billion dollar over three and a
half year period they mobilized five military campaigns 65,000 Mexican soldiers and who was driving the entire time the jackass is sitting up in the mountains of CAA Luna would ask who do you want us to go get I go get them guys at me Khan the Gringo are paying for everything then four months later Luna comes back to DC George Bush is praising him saying this is man of courage strength honesty we finally have a partner in the war on drugs he got paid 50 million from CA jackass you guys are cutting checks giving them
helicopters tanks troop transports they initiated five military campaigns operation mitan Operation Baja California operation whatz they went in the tamas twice for the Zetas and the gulf guess who didn't get an operation SE a they paid the 270 million so when you're talking about having military troops coming into the United States if you're partnering with the Mexican Government how do you know that information is not going to get leaked so when our men are going on their missions they don't have the element of surprise they air assaults they're dropping into ambushes planned by American Special
Forces supported by Mexican Special Forces twice the Amer Mexican government has sent their special forces to try to get menel on both times they got tipped off on the air on the ground assault those soldiers went right into the Ambush they unived every one of the Mexicans and left their bodies on the highway atce go suffer not one injury the Mexican Government got so pissed off they put together their most sophisticated Elite unit of Special Forces they're doing an air assault well once again one of the officers on the base called and tipped off his
Handler meno and his men got into their SUVs and they were taken off here come the helicopters they can see the Caravan they get into the formations they start descending what happens they start blowing helicopters out of the sky they have SE s7s they have manads they've demonstrated the capacity to blow military helicopters out of the sky every one of the Special Forces on those helicopters died so if you're going to send our boys into and look one of my best friends is an Army Ranger two combat tours in Afghanistan he said they were dropping
into a they were dropping into ambushes all the time the Taliban didn't have inside of you have to assume the Mexicans are going to know our guys are coming that's that's a very different picture so now if you say well we're going to cut out the Mexicans well even if you don't involve them with the infro where you going to park your helicopters you know you see on YouTube all these people talking we're going to rotate our forces out of out of Texas if you're G to go get meno meno's in the mountains of alisco
mokan that's 12200 miles from the border you're going to fly a helicopter from Fort Bliss 1,00 miles on one tank of gas drop off our men circulate above pick up our boys and bring back that's 2400 miles on one tank dodging Rockets the whole time and they know you're coming and so it's not g to be the it's not g to be the the picture that's being presented is very flawed you have almost nobody of any significance at the border Cena cartel doesn't have 25 guys at the order their highest ranking guy in TJ is
an E9 he'll have a he'll have three importation cells that report to him they're led by e7s the the workers are e6s and e5s that's it nobody in the leadership nobody in the United States of they don't put their important people at risk so you're not going to be going over the boorder and fighting cartel men there's lots of criminals in TJ that are locally contracted CA will sacrifice every man in Tijana they don't care alisco will sacrifice every guy in Mei C they don't care but if you're going to actually Target the cartel operatives
you got to go a thousand miles into country and fight them in their mountains and their military wings are like I said Special Forces trained American Special Forces LED using American Special Forces tactics interesting I've never heard of that perspective and uh sounds accurate Ironclad creates premium content no matter the environment from extreme elements to unforgiving terrain we thrive on Crafting content that captures the essence of your brand in the most challenging conditions bring your brand story to life ensuring your message leaves an impact ready to elevate your vision connect with us today at Ironclad
agency.com [Music] the question I have is you said in your email that we can discuss the second third and fourth order of consequences what were those be well certainly well you look again when you look at Afghanistan the Taliban weren't able to project power they could attack Americans in the form of American Service members well Mexico is home to the largest American expatriate there's a million and a half million there's a million and a half Americans living in Mexico in fact the largest concentration of Americans living outside of America is in halisco go to South
guada in Lake Chapala go to PTO Vara well if you've got three or 400,000 Americans living in halisco you know what they're called hostages is there a plan to remove all the Mex Americans out of Mexico how are you going to protect all these people so they can retaliate against American civilians not that they ever would do so unprovoked but once predator drones start shooting rockets off or Aur start happening now what's to stop them from paying some stupid 15-year-old kid to go into a community center and start doing idiotic stuff well there are people
that they can strike back at in the form of American civilians in Mexico that's a consequence so you're sending our boys potentially into ambushes that's the first order the second order you've got American civilians in Mexico third order for the last 30 years the American government and the Mexican Government have integrated our economies that's what NAFTA was well you have over $150 billion of direct US foreign investment in Mexico right along the border all those factories warehouses that entire structure well you know what they have a lot of in Mexico C4 Dynamite gasoline how many
of those structures are going to remain standing so they're going to be able to inflict hundreds of billions of dollars worth of loss financially just by targeting the NAFTA related businesses the they can Target all of the banks they understand that in United States the financial institutions and the corporate interest have a lot of influence with our government so they'll just start targeting American Banks they'll start targeting American businesses you can do hundreds of billions of dollars worth of Damages without ever leaving Mexico now once you get to the American side of the Border that's
where it starts getting frightening because you have teams that are highly trained in Mexico and they have no problem getting their men across the border so now let's just focus it on Southern California because I know I'm from Los Angeles nearly everybody I love is in La well we have five airports in La we're two hours from the border you've driven up the 405 freeway as you're approaching LAX the planes right come right that's the flight path right over to the highway that whole area is residential light industrial how hard is it going to get
the two guys in LA with a truck drive right over by LAX blow a civilian civilian airlin out of the sky or they coordinate it one in La one in Houston or they coordinated one in La one in Las Vegas one in Houston now what that does is that cripples civilian Aviation you're talking hundreds of billions of dollars wor a financial strike plus foreign countries won't allow their airliners to come to the United States because we can't protect our airspace that's foreign Mexicans two trucks and two rockets can inflict hundreds of billions of dollars worth
the damage you know I uh as a in preparation for this I just said you know I'm going to run this through chbt and deep seek the scenarios they proposed were shocking you know they noticed that uh in Los Angeles is La the greater Metropolitan Los Angeles area has the highest concentration of people in the United States over 18 million people well our city is surrounded Santa Monica Mountains St Gabriel mountains well water nestled all up in the canyons our Reservoir now does anybody have plans to put the 82 Airborne in San mountains to protect
our reservoirs 52 men team five Toyota pickup trucks $40,000 worth of chemicals they can [ __ ] the water supply in Los Angeles are there plans in place to make sure that we can provide water for 18 million people in Los Angeles our country couldn't get water to New Orleans for three days and new or we've got suburbs in La that are bigger than New Orleans well you need to start thinking second third fourth order consequences by individuals who once their backs are up against the wall have the capacity to strike and once they do
one of these what happens you know the American government is going to double down so now you're up on precipice of going to war against Mexico well Mexico is our largest trading partner over 800 billion dollar worth of Commerce so you're talking about crippling our economy massive inflation Panic if the water supply in La gets crippled you know and these are the kind of things that you need to think through before you just start thinking well it's going to be a cakewalk I see a lot of these guys on YouTube not having any idea of
like look these are trained individuals who are businessmen and don't want to interfere with their operations but if pushed up against the wall I had someone message me and say I give the cartel too much credit and my reply to him was it's the same as when we went to Afghanistan you realize how they were just well suited for this really uncomfortable war that as much as we can you know take the fight to the enemy we were still in their territory and some like a guy in sandals was out running me you know what
I mean like it was a different type of war and we if you if you if you you know I don't know if you if you if you don't um give them the credit of the fact like okay this is war is war right and like anything can go well there's a there's a chance it's going to be a tough one and and and I don't want to go to war I don't say that I'm just projecting that in the event that it gets to that level um a lot of people are saying we're going
to blow them out of the water I was like well I just I think about other things that can happen that make it very uncomfortable and you're mentioning things now that that's just kind of making me think even more like yeah it's it's a scary thought to think of all the other consequences that could happen just based on the fact of how close we are within proximity to them and and how fully you know Americans in Mexico and and Mexicans in in in America so it it becomes a very blurred space well you know you
have cities along the Southwest with large you know the overwhelming majority of Hispanics are of course law-abiding but that provides the cover for the guys to be able to operate so what are you going to do put an all point napb out in look for two Mexicans in a truck come on it's a not it's not feasible and you can think along you know whether it's Phoenix Las Vegas you got Lake me wide open you've got every airport in the southwest you know look at the advantages another advantage that they have over the afghanis is
they're right next door to the largest Armory in the world Texas those $2,500 sniper rifles that they're selling in Texas they go to in Mexico they going for 10,000 a piece yeah they buy 10 of them at a time and on that and if the Texas guy is greedy they'll pay him in product let me ask a question here what's the right answer how do we how do we slow down this this epidemic of opiates coming across our borders how do we slow down these cartels without causing this Mass catastrophe that could potentially happen by
putting them you know their backs on the wall I you know I don't know if America even thinks about that in the sense of like [ __ ] what they feel let's just go after them take them out but thinking more strategic like H how do you someone who has the experience someone who's been in this space for 30 years who hears them talk what's the answer for this well our country has lost the ability to outmaneuver our adversaries when we send troops into Mexico that's a concession that our leadership weren't smart enough to outmaneuver
them you know again sunu said the the Supreme Mark of Excellence is to subdue your enemy without firing a a shot and so I believe and I don't get political but I think Trump is actually more qualified than any other president to achieve the more modest objective of stopping the opioids he's not setting himself up for stopping all drug trafficking because that's a war against free markets you know humans have Unleashed two of the most powerful forces on our planet nuclear forces and Market forces he's not going after the free Market but he can outmaneuver
his adversaries to give up the fence and all because once you understand the purpose of the cartel is not to make money but to ensure the safety of the constituent organizations they can discreetly tell the Mexican Government look let them know we'll take the Kingpin strategy off the table Mexico no longer send her people to the United States for prison that's what they want they don't want Kingpin strikes they don't want decapitation strikes they want to serve their time in Mexican prisons I had a friend who did seven years in Mexican prisons he lived better
than 90% of the men in the United States slept with 200 women fathered seven women fathered seven children with six women and seven years in prison eight catered meals every day made several tens of millions of dollars from his operation while in prison well they know that if they come to the US they go to adx like Guzman so now once you understand that their primary focus isn't making money it's providing security well then you can address that concern what do we want in return stop defending them see when we created the Kingpin strategy it
was a very reasonable strategy and this is going back to your point because our leadership not the political leadership the senior bureaucratic leadership the guys that go to Ivy League schools don't understand that when you created the Kingpin strategy it would have been reasonable if the counterparty was Switzerland or Norway but it was Mexico what we did is we empowered the corrupt Mexican politician or police officer or general with leverage now they had a credible threat either you pay herard Luna $50 million or they're going to get you and send you to the us but
they got to pay they got to pay s flag is $60 million when pñ Netto the next president came into office the facts I'm citing are the trial evidence that came to light in Guzman's trial the man just won to presidency he's president-elect waiting to take office he contacts some bod's people and say hey me and people we need 250 million that's off the top well if you got to come up with a billion dollars worth of bribes every year you're a businessman are you going to take your capital and invest it in a compound
that's going to bring you 150% return on investment that's cocaine or an 800% return on investment that's crystal meth and feny or a 20 a 24 200% return on investment that's fenel what president did that P Netto in fact it's just released this week in Spanish language media in Mexico that Ismael zambada has begun cooperating with the American government and he has implicated the last two presidents not miss shine bomb not the one today but he implicated Amo and pñ Netto and it came out the trial and the trial the evidence at Guzman's trial was
that pñ Netto demanded a $250 million bribe zambad said no we'll pay you 100 million and he took the 100 million well if you're dealing with the country whose presidents are taking nine fig bribes whose cabinet level officers are taking 50 60 70 million dollar bribes you don't have a reliable partner it's what happened with us in Afghanistan the whole time we're paying the pakistanis meanwhile they're arming the Taliban they're housing Bin Laden zahiri the kashura well you can't go into any kinetic action when your so-called Ally is supporting your adversaries well the Mexican Government
is going to be actively helping not the government as an institution U but there is systemic corruption within the government so even if Miss shine bom isn't dirty is her chief of her chief of staff is somebody on her you know on her cabinet you know what we learned from the hanado Luna trial and Luna's doing 30 years today in American prison he didn't start taking bribes at 54 years old when he was the FBI director he already been taking bribes for 25 years that means the guys that are 53 54 55 year old cabinet
officers today hey they may have been getting paid for the last 25 years when they were Landing the 727s at the air base in sonod back in 1995 everybody on that chain of command was getting their envelope well the second lieutenants then are the generals today they've been getting paid for 30 years so if you're going to partner with the corrupt institution you know that they're going to thwart and undermine you at every turn which is bad for our boys going into combat but also it's the fault of the high level senior level bureaucrat and
this is where Trump is actually know he he characterizes at the Deep State because he attributes a level of malevolence to him I don't think they're acting in bad faith they're just incompetent for this particular adversary now if it's a federal if it's a debate over monetary policy at the FED listen to the guy from Harvard but if it's a knif fight in the back alley of Meo Khan that Yale all degree doesn't help you and the problem is we've got men who are creating proposals for our Command and Chiefs to select from you don't
expect our president to be an expert in 20 or 30 different subjects he's got to rely upon his advisers but if the advisers don't have familiarity with the adversary how they think how they operate you're going to keep coming up with these silly ideas like the Kingpin strategy all you did was armed H Luna to get 50 million a year so the leverage was created by the American government so the parties in Mexico the government and the drug lords are are operating in an environment shaped by American policy well we have to be able to
be a little bit more intelligent we have to shape the adversaries incentives to align with ours what do they want no decapitation no coming to the United States what do we want no fentel there's a deal to be made because they can still make all their money on coke and Crystal see today the United States government is desperate to get back to where we were with Mexico in 2014 there was no FAL coming out of Mexico in 14 that was all China if the president can get where we were back in 2014 2015 he'd go
down as one of the greatest Presidents in history now what's interesting is here I got to show you that uh this is waing Guzman's indictment this is the indictment that he got prosecuted on it he was arrested in January 2016 his indictment was filed in May of 2016 hey never been an indictment written like this in American history millions of kilos of cocaine hundreds of tons of coke hundreds of tons of Crystal billions of dollars worth of drugs foreign drug kingpin multiple importation conspiracies $15 billion dollar worth of forfeitures what word does not appear in
this indictment today the government of the United States is desperate to get back to where things were when Chapo was in charge if we could just get back to where it was with Chapo you'd be saving 95,000 Americans every year well that's why you have to think and anticipate what's going to happen every time you remove a drug lord every time results in a spike in product coming in the United States and whoever comes next has to be an even bigger scumbag it's happened whether you know they celebrate they took out Pablo Escobar in a
decapitation strike okay great that was 1993 what happened in '94 double the amount of cocaine if the goal is reducing the amount of product coming to the United States and your actions double it how's that a win we spent $2 trillion doll in Iraq lose thousands of men tens of thousands of combat related injuries and today who got the prize the Iranians you can't spend $2 trillion doll so that your adversary gets the prize that's not Garden variety level incompetence that's not run-of- thee middle level incompetence that's Harvard level of incompetence you have to go
to to Harvard Kennedy School of government to be that big of a [ __ ] to spend $2 trillion for your adversary to get the prize or for the illiterate gold herder armed with AK 4S and 40 AK-47 is in fertilizer to keep the country well it's the same reason why you can't win this drug war because the people creating the policies don't understand the adversary they're up against people with a highly attuned sense of survival and a highly developed sense of Street smarts and you need to at at a minimum start incorporating Market forces
there's a way to manipulate your adversary without having to resort to violence you just have to be smarter than them and our government has given up from what I've seen on trying to outsmart people and one positive thing that Mr Trump has done you can see he's setting up a negotiation with the Mexican Government we're not going to deal with drug dealers we're just going to deal with the Mexican Government let them look foolish let them look weak but he's manufacturing bargaining ships for himself he's going to maneuver them because he can threaten them with
enormous Financial consequences they have to lose face by conceding a little bit to the drug cartels I have a question sure Canada I've heard that there's caloa in Canada or people from caloa who manag the drugs coming in from Canada have you heard anything about this I've heard that there are Mexican national in Canada none of them having anything to do with any cartel operation the cartel operates in the United States in Los Angeles Chicago New York Atlanta and over by brag all the drugs coming right so all the drugs comeing from there are somehow
tied to it in some different way coming from Canada the amount of drugs coming in from Canada is very modest and most of that is ecstasy that's controlled by the 14k Triad know we have four Triads in Los Angeles and the 14k office in United States is in Orange County and H the Triads can you explain that the the you have well in Los Angeles we have four Chinese Triads so you've got we've got large Asian communities yes so in downtown and Chinatown we've got the Sunni own out in the San Gabriel Valley out by
where I grew up you've got the W hop toll and you've got down in Orange County to 14K and then off the 6 freeway by montabello area you've got a Taiwanese Triad which are you know Taiwanese are ethnic Chinese and uh that's the uh Four Seasons and so th those Triads operate in conjunction with the group out of Vancouver so you see a lot of the product that comes into the United States from Canada is actually Chinese based also the Chinese procure the chemicals and so you'll have chemicals coming through Vancouver come South to go
into Mexico I seen uh you know we're some of the email that you said pretty much in the back end of it is about the the veterans who are participating uh in the the veterans re-entry during the fiveyear stint uh as the program coordinator right you were you were the program coordinator for the the veteran program yes sir and uh I uh was shocked that the bureau had come up with such an impactful program you know by that point I was like 18 years into my bid and I was like oh another one of these
[ __ ] dog and pony programs and it literally changed the lives of probably hundreds of men like nobody left prison without a job nobody left prison homeless your credit was repaired you're left with all your documentation you know your post-secondary education whether it was through the GI Bill through pel grants everything was lined up guys were leaving prison reporting to a halfway house 3 Days Later starting at the local community College getting their classes for the CDL do you explain what this program is for those who are listening who might not it's a program
designed for those federal prisoners with prior US military service and it was designed to assist those prisoners achieve their re-entry goals and so the program coordinated with the VA of course and the Department of Defense and so when it started as a pilot program 16 and 17 were pilots by 18 it started becoming known throughout the system by 19 Trump had already sent his bureau the Bop director who was a former Army General a guy named Minch to come inspect the program I spent half an hour talking to him I've given probably three dozen tours
of that program by the time I signed my halfway house papers in January 23 over the five-year period leading up to that period the recidivism rate was down to 1% whereas standard in the rest of the zero it's at 40 45 50 some prisons at 60% yeah and so this program was incredibly impactful you know you had a lot of combat veterans come back a lot of men from Iraq a lot of men from Iraq Afghanistan a lot of men with PTSD issues so the VA was coming in they were bringing in the counselors they
were getting the men the treatment in the programs because a lot of them got in trouble because you know they come back their lives fall apart marriages break apart they can't hold a job they are really in a position to stabilize themselves get themselves grounded and it was a great program because you had the older guys from the Vietnam War so you got you know you got guys in there with two Bron Stars Purple Heart another guy with two purple hearts Bron star where he's discuss talking to the young 25-year-old who just got back from
Iraq and made mistakes and so it was an opportunity for the guys to it was a residential based program we lived in a separate unit the place was always sparkling I mean it was spotless you know it was very respectful at 10 o'clock it was lights out you know you didn't have people getting drunk or getting high or having sex in the bathrooms and stuff it like it was just a very respectful clean quiet living environment and the program was designed with the five main workshops to get the men in a position to not fail
when they get released and you know whether it was transitional housing so that people can facilitate a move to a new city because one of their army everybody's G him a job but you can't transfer cities unless you have an address but the guy doesn't have an address so then we go to the VA they put him in transitional housing I mean it's the little things that are the the difference between someone coming back because he gets frustrated he's got no money he's broke he's living in his car and he knocks off a liquor store
or you help him for those first couple two three months and boom now they're on her feet and the program was remarkable by the end of it we had guys tours coming in from centcom people coming in from DOD in uh 2022 the bureau adopted it and made it available now Nationwide there are veterans re-entry programs in every Federal Institution that's cool yeah we had a remarkable Warden and a remarkable program director jod Ward and the warden Miss Kathy Lane and uh they went the bat and what was shocking is see this wasn't a program
initially sponsored by The Bureau Miss Ward came out of her pocket to start the program so for the first three years it wasn't funded and so it wasn't until that Army General came and saw it he's like man replicate this scale it all up and uh you know look there's always going to be people with negative attitudes they didn't get anything out of it but if you came in with the right attitude and you just say look humble yourself a little bit I need help my wife left me I'm getting released homeless in Atlanta I
don't got an address can you get me a address in Nashville boom we got you well you know men need to come out of prison with a job they need a roof over their head they need their credit repaired they need their driver's license they need all their documentation they need their post-secondary education if they got any military benefits coming they got with all their benefits I was getting guys agent orange pay from from the 1970s from Vietnam guys are getting 300 $400,000 checks like had no idea they were even eligible for this now they
can't receive the money while they're in prison so it's held for them until they get released so these are men in their 70s that are going to be able to you know help their grandkids pay for their college you know you really see it touched a lot of people in a way that the bureau's programming never does and so I was very proud to be associated with that program um I'm glad to hear it and it sounds I've had friends who go you know find the way in prison make mistakes but it's really nice to
hear that there's some kind of program yes sir my question I have only a couple questions left but one of the big questions is why did you want to speak out about this what what is it about this that you wanted to make sure you you got the platform and talked about it well you know I'm I'm an author and I I do speaking engagements and I do a p on podcasts and I hope to get people to understand that we can Prevail being a little bit more sophisticated work to outsmart your adversary at a
minimum you know there are men in the United States that are massive traffickers who you know did their time in prison who have insights into to how these operations are structured I'm talking about me I can give you names of a dozen guys create a red team ask them how would they respond you know just like the the Kingpin strategy is a perfect example or what's going to happen when you take out nachal C now well you know what's going to happen his organization is going to fracture they're going to have an infighting the guy
that takes over he's menal today you got a new generation well had you just left natural now in charge you'd have no fentol coming out of halisco you took out aoro beltron his organization fractured they fall they reconstituted today they're the cartel of the Northeast the largest fentol producers in caloa had you just left belon in place or na cell in place or W guz in chap in place you wouldn't have exacerbated the very problem you're trying to address so instead of defining situations narrowly thinking I'm gonna get this guy but what's the consequences of
getting this guy because whatever comes next by definition has to be worse when you break up an organization's factions each faction is going to fight for control in Mexico power is defined by access to corrupt Pol political figures to have that power you need money so now you've got six organizations rather than one and what are these six doing they're all scrambling to raise Capital so what do they got to do they got to flood the market every time you take out a kingpin You flood the market they got to raise Capital to buy politicians
to buy Hit Men to buy weapons you're in incentivizing your opponent to do the very thing you're trying to stop and that's why I would like to add that voice to the conversation simply saying look of course our military can defeat these guys but there's a much smarter way to move than creating circumstances where American citizens in Mexico could be at risk American citizens in Southern California can be a risk or in southern Texas or along the border in Arizona I mean this isn't Afghanistan now business their business model is they don't harm Americans but
those rules were in place before predator drones Were Striking them in guada last thing is there any message you'd like to tell some of the young people that might be tempted or Allure to the drug trade you know I've spoken with many groups of younger guys and you know young men are always going to be attracted to you know fast cars fast money fast women and so the initial part of the conversation is yeah I go along with it I talk some of the stories yeah yeah yeah having a good time then I point out
the fact that look it's not worth the 30-year sentence when you're in prison and you can't come Fort your mother when your father died or your brother died when you're not there to help your family or help your children when one of your friends is hitting on your girlfriend or hitting on your wife while you're away like those are the things you have to think about the people that you think are your friends are the ones who are going to tell on you you know I made the mistake following my arrest I turned down three
opportunities to cooperate I'd have gotten five years I turned that down because I'm protecting my friends one of them was my best friend Joey 20 months into my pre-trial custody he flips on me like what am I doing in jail protecting these guys and then they cut my throat like I should have just cut all their throats coming in the front door I'd have been home in 2000 rather than in 24 and so those are the lessons I try to express to the younger guys like hey it's all fun in games when you've got the
money I get it the cars the money the women believe me I understand I fell into that trap but you're 25 years old because a lot of the guys like hey well they're going to get out they're goingon to get back to work like they got another run in them so are you insane you're looking at a mandatory minimum 20 years on a second offense I got a 30 piece on a first offense now granted it's because of a significant amount of product but at a minimum it's 20 even for some broke dick Joker it's
20 because of a prior conviction I said are you prepared to do 20 over what and then every time every man that leaves federal prison you got a bullseye on your back so everybody knows that they can get out of jail by giving you up because the American government is always going to go for the prior convicted drug cign from federal prison and so I lay out the consequences like I don't come in with the happy talk you know I don't come in with the faith-based that's not my place to speak I come in with
cold hard reality if you choose to return understand you're G to get 20 years you're going to get 30 years and these are the consequences and you're going to think for the next 25 years why didn't I just take that deal because everybody you love betrays you to protect themselves and I've had numerous younger guys come in and say you know I thought I had another run in me but I'm gonna take that CDL course because at least being a commercial driver you know about the FBI jacking you off yeah well Pier I I honestly
really appreciate this conversation we've had so much here I think we're going to have to call you back for a second one there's a lot to unpack but um thank you so much honestly for for for giving us your your expertise and your information no problem sir thank you thank you for listening to Borderland Narcosis and Ironclad original this interview for me was kind of an Insider look at what the C cartel really looks like and what we've been told that might not necessarily be true so for me I loved it and I'm very interested
in looking deeper into what he had to say take care [Music]
